The next morning didn't so much arrive as crash into Harry like a rogue Bludger.
Blinding and merciless light stabbed at his eyelids, and pain came with it, thick and crawling, as though it had been waiting in the dark just for him. Every breath dragged through him. His skull thudded in rhythm with his heartbeat, each thump a dull, punishing reminder he was still alive.
He floated on the edge of waking, caught in that hazy space between sleep and consciousness where time had no meaning and nothing made sense. The bone-deep and clawing pain was everywhere.
For a moment, he didn't know where he was. Or why he hurt.
Panic surged, sudden and sharp.
Had the battle not ended? Had he fallen again, somewhere else? Is this another cursed forest, trap, and last stand?
His fingers twitched, useless against the weight pinning him to the mattress. He screwed his eyes tighter shut, willing the world away. Maybe if he stayed still, if he didn't move or think or remember, he could slide back into that warm, forgetful dark.
But something broke through the fog.
A touch. Gentle. Light as a feather across the bridge of his nose.
And a cracked sound, but unmistakable.
"Harry, are you all right?"
Hermione.
He knew that voice. He would know it anywhere. Even when worry stretched it tight, or when it sounded like it was about to break, he would recognise it.
That small, familiar flutter stirred weakly in his chest. She was here. They were here.
He dragged in a shallow breath and forced his eyes open, though the light sent a fresh bolt of agony through his head.
The world blurred until the edges were flickering in and out of focus before sharpening just enough to make out Hermione's face leaning close, her brow furrowed so severely it looked like it hurt. Behind her, Ron stood stiffly, arms folded, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. Guilt, fury, and helplessness appeared to have etched themselves into every corner of his mouth, which was drawn in a tight, unreadable line.
Neville remained further away, looking pale and twitchy, his hands wringing together like he was expecting to be shouted at.
Harry tried to sit up.
The burning and vicious pain came on fast. He sucked in a breath that turned to a gasp and collapsed back into the pillows, blinking hard.
Stupid. He knew better. However, even though his body screamed otherwise, he was still wired with the instinct to settle, rise, and move.
"Neville," he rasped, his throat raw and scorched.
Just the name was enough to pull at a thread inside him. A detail cracked open, and memories came spilling through the gap: Yaxley's twisted smile, the false warmth of trust, and then the thick and cruel poison sinking into his blood.
He stepped forward, clutching something flat and glossy to his chest.
"I—I didn't realise you were here until this morning," he blurted, his words tumbling over one another. "Gran saw this—she showed me and she said I should come straight away."
He held out the magazine with both hands, like it might bite him.
Harry squinted at the Witch Weekly cover. The image swam before his eyes, but there he was. Limp. Lifeless. Cradled in Hagrid's arms, with his limbs dangling, features ashen.
Above it, the headline screamed:
THE BOY WHO DISAPPEARED—SPOTTED AT ST MUNGO'S!
A rush of heat flared up Harry's neck and across his face; hot and sickening. Not embarrassment. Something worse. Shame. Helplessness. Anger. A storm of emotions he couldn't untangle, all twisted together until his stomach lurched.
"Rita Skeeter," he muttered, his lip curling around the name like it left an unpleasant taste.
"She's vile," Hermione snapped, her voice sharpened with fury. "Honestly, Harry, if I had her here right now, I'd—I'd—"
"Lock her in a jar again?" Harry croaked, managing a faint smile.
She gave a short, breathy laugh—half a sob, really. The sound cracked in the middle, but she clung to it. Even Ron flashed a grin, though it seemed like it cost him something to do it.
Neville, however, didn't smirk. He stood frozen, still holding the magazine, as though the image on the cover had locked his joints in place.
"What happened, Harry?" he asked, barely above a whisper. "You looked—you appeared dead in the photo. I did not even believe it at first. I thought it—it was a trick. Some kind of lie."
Harry shut his eyes to find the will to talk. The memory of that moment: the heat, the helplessness, the burn in his blood—tightened around his lungs.
"Poisoned," he said at last.
The word landed like a curse.
Neville's hands trembled.
"P—poison?" he squeaked, eyes going wide. "But who… how—?"
"It wasn't just some random bloke," Ron muttered, his tone low and dangerous. "It was someone pretending to be one of my brothers. Someone Harry would trust."
Harry felt his stomach clench again.
Even now, the thought of it made his skin crawl. That voice and face. That lie.
"Who?" Neville asked, dread thick in the word.
Ron's jaw tightened.
"Yaxley," he spat. "Corban bloody Yaxley."
Neville staggered back half a step, his features draining of colour. "That man? But… but wasn't he—he's a Death Eater, right? The one—?"
He faltered, his eyes darting to Harry, as if afraid to say it aloud.
"Yes," Hermione said. "Harry hit him with a curse. A year ago. He went to Azkaban. But he escaped. Somehow. Voldemort gave him a Ministry post during the war. He always slithered into the places where he could do the most damage."
"One of the worst of them," Ron muttered darkly, "and that's saying something."
Harry turned his face away, jaw clenched. He could still feel the phantom burn in his veins, the way it had stolen control of his body, bit by bit. And he'd trusted him. He hadn't even flinched until it was too late.
He hated the memory and the weakness within it.
And yet, right now, he couldn't shake the thought that he could've died. Easily. Quietly. Alone.
And no amount of heroics would've changed it.
He looked back at Neville, who still lingered there, shocked and pale, his shoulders curled inward as if he was trying to make himself disappear.
"I'm fine," Harry said in a low voice, though he wasn't entirely sure it was true.
"We have to be careful," Hermione exclaimed sharply, her words cutting through the tension. She stood rigid by the window, scanning the corridor as though expecting Death Eaters to burst through the plaster at any moment. She clenched her wand in her fist, making her knuckles white. "Now that it's in the open, Harry's vulnerable."
Harry didn't answer. The statement sank into his skin, slow and cold, like sleet running down the back of his neck. Sitting target. She wasn't wrong. He couldn't even stand without help—never mind defend himself.
Neville fidgeted near the end of the mattress, his fingers wringing the corner of his sleeve, his voice trembling. "Gran says there's already a crowd outside. Not just reporters, either. Loads of people. Shouting. Pushing at the entrance…"
Harry's blood turned to ice.
They were here.
They knew.
He was known to be in a hospital bed. He was no longer the symbol that was Harry Potter, but a wounded, vulnerable, and weak famous wizard.
He was bait, and the trap had already sprung shut.
"It's a mixed lot," Ginny announced from the doorway. Tense. Tired. But clear.
Harry's heart kicked, thudding against his ribs.
Relief flared, but it didn't last long. Not even a second.
"Some are just gawking," she muttered grimly as she stepped inside. "Rubberneckers, probably. But some… they don't look friendly."
Her eyes met his for a moment. There was no warmth in her expression now, only resolve and something flickering behind it. Fear, maybe.
"Rita Skeeter's article said you were dying," Hermione snapped, anger seeping out. "In the arms of—quote—'a fierce, beastly-looking man'."
Harry made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a groan. "Well," he rasped, "she's not wrong about Hagrid."
A weak joke, but it broke the surface, just for a breath.
Then the flicker of humour shrivelled, smothered by the weight pressing hard against his chest.
He could feel it. The building pressure. The way danger crept into the corners of a room before anyone acknowledged it. He knew that feeling too well. He'd felt it in tents, on battlefields, in graveyards. It was here now. Louder than footsteps. Closer than a breath.
And then, as though summoned by thought alone, a sound curled through the walls.
It was deep, almost lazily so, but carried the confidence that didn't need to shout to be heard.
"I know you're afraid to come out."
Harry's lungs froze. His entire body stiffened, as if the words themselves had coiled around his ribs and squeezed.
The voice wasn't coming from inside the room.
It was everywhere.
Low and oily, slipping between the walls, seeping through the air and familiar in the worst possible way.
No one moved.
No one even breathed.
Harry's pulse slammed in his ears.
"Healers," Hermione whispered, her face stricken. "The patients…"
Harry turned his head, slow and aching, towards the open door.
People lined the corridor beyond: medical staff in lime-green robes, those being treated in hospital gowns, and visitors with anxious faces—all standing stock-still, frozen where they stood. Their eyes were blank. Wide. Unblinking.
Staring.
As though someone had pressed pause on the world, and fear itself had turned them to stone.
"Death Eaters fought bravely alongside the Dark Lord," the speaker continued, smooth and cold. "They gave everything. And what did you do, Harry Potter? You destroyed it."
Harry's heart crashed against his ribcage.
He knew that voice.
Yaxley.
It was him. Of course, it was.
He was here.
He was here.
His chest tightened, not just with fear, but fury. It was hot and helpless. The Death Eater had stolen his face, his voice, and his trust. He'd poured poison down his throat and watched him choke on it. And now he was back to finish the job.
But Harry couldn't fight. Couldn't even stand.
"Fellow Death Eaters," Yaxley said, his speech rising, venomous and triumphant, "we know where the boy is. Let's end it."
He delivered the ultimate word with force.
End.
It snapped something in the room. Broke the silence like glass underfoot.
Neville stumbled backwards, nearly tripping over a stool. Ron let out a furious swear, one hand already digging into his pocket for his wand. Ginny didn't speak, just moved. Swift. Steady. She drew her wand as if it were an extension of her arm.
Her face was pale, but her eyes were burning.
Harry stayed still.
Panic crashed through him, messy and wild, tearing at the inside of his chest.
The room was too small.
The walls were too close.
He couldn't run or fight or do anything.
The thought slammed into him, heavy and breathless.
I'm going to die here.
He found himself once more in the forest, facing Voldemort. Back in that graveyard, locked in Priori Incantatem, and every nightmare he'd ever survived by sheer luck and someone else's sacrifice.
Except this time, he had nothing left.
No wand. No plan. No power.
Only pain.
And them.
And the noise, it was rising outside, a crashing wave of shouts and screams.
"Bloody hell!" Ron barked, pushing aside the curtain and pressing himself to the window. "The crowd's doubled! They are swarming the steps!"
Harry's head swam. His pulse thundered. It felt like the air had changed to water.
"They're trying to force the doors!" Neville choked out. "Too many are coming through the entrance—they'll—!"
His voice faltered, cracking under the strain. He turned to Harry, wide-eyed, desperate. "We have to move you! You're not safe here!"
I can't, Harry wanted to say. But even that took too much.
"This was the plan," Ginny stated, her tone tight and low. "Yaxley craved this. Hoped to trap Harry and force him into the open. While he's weak."
She met Harry's eyes again, and there it was.
The fear.
Not for herself. For him.
He hated it. Hated being the reason for that look.
"You have to get out," Neville said suddenly, stepping forward. "Now, Harry. While there's still a chance."
Harry tried.
Merlin, he attempted.
He pushed with his arms once. Twice. The third time, he almost made it upright.
Then agony slammed into him, red and merciless, shattering across his ribs and spine like lightning.
He collapsed back against the pillows with a cry.
Gasping.
Useless.
The crowd outside howled.
He could feel them now; their hunger, their fury, their belief that he owed them something. That he should show his face! That he belonged to them.
As if being their saviour once had signed his life away.
And he couldn't even lift a wand.
"Back to the Burrow?" Ron blurted, turning sharply to Hermione, panic etched across his features. He tangled his fingers in his hair, tugging with such force that Harry half-expected a chunk to fall out. "We could—can't we just—?"
"No," Ginny said quickly, interrupting him before he could spiral further. She shook her head so hard her locks whipped over her cheeks in a blur of red. "We cannot. It's not secure. Percy and Kingsley haven't finished the wards yet. The southern boundary's still open. If we head there now, it is as good as giving Harry away."
Ron blinked, then dropped his hands to his sides, fists clenched. "Then where, Ginny? Where else are we supposed to go?" His voice cracked on the last word, too high, too loud. "He will not make it through another attack, not like this."
Harry squeezed his eyes shut. The words swam around him, disjointed and sharp, bouncing off the inside of his skull. He couldn't think. His thoughts slipped through his fingers. Everything was deafening: the pounding in his head, the rising noise outside, and the beating drum of panic in his chest.
The pain was a living thing now, constant and clawing.
Yaxley.
The crowd.
The hospital was pressing in.
The taste of fear was so thick in his throat he could hardly breathe.
Despite that, the voices kept coming, too fast to catch.
Hermione stopped pacing. She had been circling the bed, wringing her hands and muttering half-formed plans under her breath. Now she froze mid-step, eyes wide.
"Shell Cottage," she blurted. Her voice cracked the way dry twigs snap beneath a boot. "We go there. Fleur and—"
Ron's face lit up as if someone had flung open the curtains on a dark room. "Yes! Merlin, Hermione, that's it. My brother's house. It's under the Fidelius, right? Properly warded. And Bill won't hesitate—not for a second."
"But how?" Ginny asked, stepping towards the bed. Her eyes flicked anxiously to Harry and lingered. "We can't apparate him. He'd die before we even reached the boundary. And Floo's useless. The network's flooded with press and security checks."
"There's a Portkey," Ron said at once, snapping his fingers as the idea formed. "Dad's got one in the garden shed for emergencies. Keeps it buried under the broomsticks. He used to use it for dodging inspections when he borrowed Muggle tech."
Harry tried to follow, but the words were drifting further and further away.
Stay awake.
Keep your eyes open.
"I'll go," said Ron, already striding towards the door. "Hermione, come with me. I'm going to need help to find the bloody thing in all that junk."
Ginny quickly nodded, and she moved toward Harry. "Neville and I will remain. We won't leave him."
He gave a jerky nod, his wand clutched tightly in his fingers. He looked petrified, but he didn't flinch. Harry saw the quiet courage burning low beneath the fear.
"I'll let Mum and Dad know," she added quietly, as though half-afraid of her own words. "And Percy. If anyone can get the Burrow locked down fast, it's him."
Voices. Footsteps. The rush of decision-making. It all blurred together. Harry couldn't keep hold of anything for more than a breath.
Then silence fell.
Heavy and suffocating.
Ron and Hermione were gone. The sound of their footfalls had faded down the corridor, swallowed by the chaos outside. In its place came stillness. But the quiet felt wrong. Like the air itself was bracing for something.
Harry stared up at the ceiling. Each breath rattled in and out of him, shallow and painful. His fingers twitched restlessly against the sheet. He could feel the shadows in the corners of the room shifting, stretching, drawing closer.
Beside him, Neville sat rigid in the hard-backed chair, glancing every few seconds between Harry and the door. He was trying to look brave and to be the person his gran believed he was. But Harry could see the terror in the set of his jaw, the whiteness of his knuckles around his wand.
Harry wanted to say something. Crack a joke. Anything to make the fear in the room feel a little less sharp and threatening.
But all that came out was a strangled wheeze.
The minutes crept on.
The pain gnawed at him, sharper now, deeper. It felt as if his bones were humming and burning from the inside out. Every throb of his heart was like another knock against the fragile scaffolding of his mind.
Then, a creak.
The door.
Harry's heart stuttered, then slammed into overdrive. His body locked.
His hand jerked feebly toward the bedside table, though he knew his wand wasn't there. He didn't even remember when it had been taken from him. It felt miles away now. Like everything else.
Neville leapt to his feet, wand raised. "Who's there?"
The door burst open.
Ginny. She was breathless and wild-eyed, and behind her, blocking the doorway entirely, was Hagrid.
He looked enormous and frantic. The moment he stepped into the room, the air seemed to shift.
Relief crashed over Harry so fast he nearly sobbed.
But then—
Something else.
Not the steady, dull ache he expected. Not even the sharp stabs of breathing or the tightness in his ribs.
This was different.
Sudden.
Hot.
Wrong.
It started in his chest—a searing pressure that bloomed outward like fire, racing down his arms, curling in his legs. His back arched involuntarily. His fingers scrabbled at the blankets, trying to hold on to something, anything.
A scream tore free from his throat.
He didn't even know he was making the sound until Ginny's face went pale and Hagrid thundered forward with a roar of "Harry! Merlin's beard, what's happening?!"
Harry did not reply. He couldn't. The world pitched sideways, the bed heaving beneath him. White exploded behind his eyes. He was falling, plummeting through the mattress, through the floor, down into something deep and endless and black.
Ginny's hands were on his, clutching desperately. "Harry—Harry, no—not now, stay with me, please!"
But the sound of his own pain shredded her voice and drowned it out.
He could no longer see her.
Couldn't discern anything.
Just fire.
And falling.
And then—
Nothing.
Only her hand, small and shaking in his—
And black.
Somewhere just on the edge of consciousness, voices reached him.
They were unclear and jumbled, distorted by distance or magic or both. Despite that, he knew them.
Ron's frantic shouting. Hermione, barking orders with that clipped, determined tone she always had when things got properly bad.
Harry tried to hold on to the sound, sought to follow it back to the world of light and breath and solid ground, but it slipped through his fingers.
The pain was worse now. Deeper. It wasn't just burning anymore, but it pulled. Coiled around his chest like Devil's Snare, tightening each time he dared to struggle. Every gasp drew it tighter, dragging him down.
The smell of his sweat, he realised, and something else that resembled fear, caught at the back of his throat. He gagged, choking on it.
Then a wrench.
The sudden, stomach-lurching spin of a violent and clumsy Portkey. Not similar to the gentle pull he remembered from official Ministry ones. This was rough and wrong, tearing him away from the hospital, from everything—
From safety.
He hit the ground hard.
A single brutal jolt punched all the breath out of him. The gritty dampness of the earth pressed against his palms, and he grabbed at it as though he could stop himself from slipping further. His fingers sank into sand and weeds and broken shells.
Something sharp pricked at the air—salt. Cold and wet and bracing. It clung to his skin, soaked into his lungs. There were waves crashing nearby; he could hear them pounding rhythmically against stone.
But it wasn't enough.
He was stumbling and losing himself bit by bit.
I can't—
The thought fractured before it could finish.
A fresh wave of nausea surged through him. He turned his head just in time. His stomach heaved, bile scorched his throat, and for a moment, the only thing in the world was that awful, retching burn.
His whole body was shaking now. Useless. Betraying him. Even the smallest breath seemed too much.
Then—
"Harry!"
A voice pierced through the storm. Familiar, urgent, ragged.
Ginny.
His heart jerked at the sound. Somewhere beneath the sickness and the darkness and the fear, something recognised her.
He tried to lift his head to find her face, but the sky spun madly above him. Her hands found him first, trembling against his cheek. Her voice followed a second later, close now, too soft for him to understand, but he felt it. The warmth of her breath. The sharp edge of fear in it.
Others joined hers. Stronger. Bigger. One was gripping his shoulder. Another steadied his hip. Too many to count.
They were lifting him.
He didn't know who they all were. He couldn't name the hands or the arms or the voices, but they were there. They were holding on. They refused to release him.
The cold, sharp, and aching memory came unbidden.
The Astronomy Tower. Dumbledore's body broke on the ground below. He'd wanted to fall with him. But they hadn't let him. Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Neville, and Luna—they'd stood with him. Around him. For him.
He had no idea how to allow them to help him then.
Even now, he wasn't sure he deserved it.
"Get him inside! Quickly!"
Bill's voice rang out, breaking the paralysis.
Harry felt himself hauled forward awkwardly and clumsily. His limbs were dragged as if they weren't properly attached to him. His head lolled sideways against someone's torso, and then the light hit him.
Warm, golden.
The interior of Shell Cottage.
They set him down on the nearest couch, careful but hurried. The cushions were thick and giving beneath him, and for a moment, it felt like he was sinking into them, disappearing.
He lay there, gasping. Muscles twitching. Chest rising and falling as if he had run a marathon.
The room swam.
Bill leaned over him, and even through the blur, Harry could see his face looked drawn and pale, his eyes shadowed with something tight and fearful.
He had always been solid. He was the eldest. The protector. The calm one.
But now he appeared as if he were hanging on by a thread.
"What happened?" He asked, low and urgent, glancing up at Ron and Hermione and then back down at him.
His younger brother opened his mouth, then closed it again. His eyes were red.
"He's very ill," he managed finally, the words raw and reluctant, like they'd scraped their way out of him.
Harry heard it as a sentence. Cold. Final.
He didn't need to ask what came next.
"He is dying," Ron added, barely above a whisper.
And there it was.
The truth spoken plainly.
He shut his eyes.
He had known, hadn't he? Somewhere deep down. From the moment Voldemort had marked him, from the first Horcrux, the earliest scar-ache that refused to go away, he'd understood.
But hearing it said aloud by his best friend, no less, tore something inside him.
He didn't want to die.
Not like this, as if he were so helpless, so hollowed out.
No, Harry thought fiercely. The thought burned within him, intense and unyielding.
But his body wouldn't move, and his lips couldn't say the words. He could not even blink.
Pain, silence, and the weight of everyone else's grief trapped him.
Bill's voice again, sharper now. "What do you mean, dying? What happened to him?"
There was an edge in his tone—fear, but something else. A quiet accusation. You were supposed to protect him. How did you let this happen?
Hermione turned her face away. Ron flinched.
"It's…" his best friend began, and Harry could feel the guilt in every syllable. "It just got worse. After everything. After Voldemort… after the last battle. We thought he was recovering at first, but then—"
He broke off. Swallowed hard.
"He's been deteriorating ever since."
He wished to tell them that they were not responsible.
That it wasn't anyone's fault.
That some wounds don't leave marks you can see.
But the words were stuck. Trapped behind his teeth like everything else.
And the darkness, so close now, pressed in again, whispering that it was easier not to fight.
He clung to Ginny's palm, even as the pain rose.
"Ron, help me!"
Hermione's voice cut through the haze, sharp with fear, cracking with the pressure she was barely holding back.
It yanked them all into motion.
She was on her knees beside him, wild-haired and pale, one trembling hand cradling Harry's head, the other pressing a tiny glass vial against his lips.
"He's thrashing. I can't get him to drink it!" She gasped, her voice rising an octave as she fought to keep calm.
Harry barely registered the sounds around him. Everything smeared together: the crash of the sea beyond the walls, the hiss of breath, and the thudding panic of his own heart. The pain was everywhere, pulling tighter and tighter the more he tried to resist.
Then familiar hands were on him.
Ron.
He felt his best friend shove forward, his grip tight, pinning his shoulders against the cushions.
"Easy, mate," he muttered, low and urgent, breath ragged. "We've got you. Just hold on, yeah? Hang on."
The words rang hollow in Harry's ears.
I've been holding on, he thought bitterly, for years. For all of them.
Bill's firm hands joined next, clamping down over his legs as another violent shudder wracked his body. He wanted to scream and to stop.
Hermione pressed the vial to his lips again.
"Harry," she whispered, voice trembling now. "Swallow, please."
The potion was bitter, almost metallic, and his mouth recoiled instinctively, but somewhere in the storm of fear and agony, something steadier stirred: trust. It was her. She wouldn't give him anything that would hurt.
He forced himself to gulp down.
It scorched down his throat like firewhiskey set alight, burning as it went. For one blinding moment, it felt as if it might tear him apart from the inside out.
Then, slowly, as though it could've been his imagination, the pain ebbed. Not gone, not by a long shot, but… dulled. The panic faded into something just shy of manageable.
His limbs, once wild and spasming, stilled.
Still shallow and raw, his chest heaved, but the gasps no longer felt like drowning.
And then, without quite meaning to, Harry let out a sound. Small. Crooked. Somewhere between a groan and a sob. The noise he only made when the pain had finally ceased enough for him to feel the relief.
Hermione released a shaky breath, her hands eventually loosening. She sagged, slumping down beside the sofa, as though the fight had gone out of her all at once.
Ron's hand stayed on Harry's arm, warm and unmoving. As if releasing might undo whatever fragile magic had just taken hold.
Bill crouched next to them, his voice quieter now, but the emotion remained thick in it. "Stay with us, mate," he said, eyes shadowed. "Don't let go."
Harry pried his eyelids open.
It took effort.
The room swam in and out of focus, bathed in firelight and fading spells. Ginny was kneeling nearby, her face pale, her freckles stark against her skin, tears still clinging to her lashes. Her hand hovered just above his chest, not quite touching, like she didn't trust herself not to shatter him.
Hermione sat back on her heels, biting her lower lip, looking near to breaking. Ron seemed to have watched his best friend fall off a cliff and was not entirely convinced it had not happened.
Harry swallowed. His throat burnt.
I'm still here, he thought, stunned.
And he was. Barely. But he was.
Yet even now, he could feel the fragility.
The dark hadn't vanished, and a voice was speaking within him. It hasn't gone. It's waiting. You've done enough. No one would blame you.
No, he pondered fiercely.
He shut his eyes tight, blocking out their faces, the guilt, and the fear.
He forced his thoughts anywhere else.
To flying: the rush of air in his face, the Firebolt trembling beneath him, the stadium roaring with life.
To Ron's laughter, the sort that left him red-faced and breathless, doubled over.
To Hermione, triumphant and smug, flourishing a book or scroll with that "I told you so" sparkle in her eyes.
To Ginny's warm and calloused hand from broom work, steady in his.
He clung to those moments. Dug his fingernails into them and held on.
Not yet, he announced to the darkness. I'm still fighting.
Around him, the room moved on without him: soft whispers, the clink of glass, the occasional whispered spell. He felt it all as if through muffled and blurred water.
He hovered on the edge. Between sleep and wake. Between pain and something else. Letting go tugged at him.
And then—
The stillness shattered.
A burst of silver light split the air.
Harry flinched, his whole body jerking as if jolted by a curse.
The glow coalesced overhead before him, swirling like mist caught in moonlight, until it sharpened, shimmered, shifted—
—a lynx.
Massive. Beautiful. Its coat gleamed as it glided forward, utterly silent, glowing with spectral intensity. It moved as if it were part of the wind, rippling through the atmosphere without a sound.
Harry knew what it was before it opened its mouth.
Kingsley's Patronus.
The creature hovered, paws barely brushing the floor, and parted its jaws.
The minister's voice filled the room, smooth and deep, but there was strain beneath it. A tension he wasn't used to hearing.
"I am aware of the incident. Seek immediate shelter. Please contact me when it's possible."
Then there was silence.
The lynx dissolved into smoke, vanishing in an instant. No one moved.
Not immediately.
The hush it left behind was heavier than the Patronus itself. It settled over them.
Hermione sat frozen. Ginny had gone pale again. Ron's jaw clenched so tightly his teeth might've cracked.
Harry felt his pulse hammering.
Incident? he thought.
His mind chased the words, tripping over itself in panic. He tried to sit up, but even that was too much because his limbs refused to obey. His fingers twitched uselessly at his side.
Bill broke the frozen silence, despite his raw-sounding voice scraping.
"Why would Kingsley send word here?" He asked, furrowing his brow so deeply it might have been carved into stone. "What does he mean, 'aware of the incident'?"
The question hung in the air, sharp and unforgiving, and no one answered immediately. The tension in the room had tightened.
Hermione's eyes flicked to Ron, and in the half-second before she looked away again, Harry caught it: the silent exchange. Too fast for anyone else to see, but he knew that look. He'd seen it more times than he could count over the years.
They were keeping a detail from him.
Hermione drew a breath, the kind that braced a person for bad news. She always steeled herself before plunging into something messy. It was a habit she had when stepping into arguments, or battles, or the truth.
"It's about our best friend," she whispered. "And your parents."
Bill didn't move or blink. It was the stillness that made his skin crawl.
"They were attacked," Hermione continued, slower now, as if the words had weight. "At the Burrow. Yesterday."
Harry's insides clenched.
"Yaxley got to them. He poisoned him… and stunned your mum and dad."
He visibly flinched. His fingers curled against the fabric of the blanket thrown over his legs. A bitter sort of shame twisted in his gut, acidic and biting.
Because of me.
That was always the central point. He was the end, no matter how much they ran or lived.
He wouldn't look at Bill and see what was in his eyes.
But he didn't have to.
Bill's hands clenched into fists at his sides. His jaw worked silently for a moment before anything came out, and when he finally spoke, his tone was hoarse, frayed with something raw and childlike.
"What? Where are they now? St Mungo's?"
"Yes," Ginny said quickly and firmly, and for once the sound of her voice sounded years older than she was. "Percy and Hagrid are with them. They're alive. Just… shaken."
Her knuckles were white around the back of the chair she stood behind. Harry realised she hadn't let go since they had arrived.
"We had to leave," she went on, her tone growing harder. "Fast. We used a Portkey."
Bill stared at her, and for a moment he looked lost.
"But why?" he asked, his voice splintering at the edges. "Why did you abandon them?"
He recognised the tremble emanating from him.
It was fear.
The kind that crept in when you were afraid of the answer because you already knew it.
"There was an attack," Ron blurted, his speech cracking. "At St Mungo's—"
"No," Hermione cut across him, low and cold. "It wasn't. But it was a trap."
She stepped forward slightly, her face pale, her breathing ragged, but her tone never wavered again. "Yaxley used an amplifying charm. Some kind of dark broadcast spell. He amplified Harry's presence and sent a magical signal, somehow, through the entire wizarding world. Anyone sensitive to certain magic could feel it."
His blood ran cold.
"He wanted to draw people out of hiding. Stir the pot. And it worked. The public is panicking. There's unrest and fear, and more than a few of them are looking for Harry now, and not all of them mean well."
She stopped then, and the silence that followed wasn't only quiet; it was heavy. Pressing. As if the weight of everything they had just said was dragging the room down around them.
He could feel it.
The moment. The shift.
They had had a brief window, a flicker of hope after the war, after Voldemort's fall. A heartbeat of peace. But it was gone now.
Bill ran a hand through his hair, and it shivered. "And Mum and Dad?" he asked, his voice cracking.
"They're holding on," Ginny whispered. "They said they'd come when they can."
He nodded, but it was a hollow thing. He was trying to make sense of it all. But there wasn't one.
Before anyone else could speak, Harry made a low and raw sound, somewhere between a gasp and a sob.
And then the pain hit.
No warning. No buildup. Just fire.
He arched against the sofa cushions, biting down hard on a cry that tore its way through his throat anyway. He buried his face in the fabric, desperate to muffle it, but the tremors wouldn't stop. His limbs jerked. His chest burnt.
It felt like something inside him was tearing, splitting straight down the middle.
Ginny was at his side in a flash, her fingers finding his, gripping it too tightly, but he was grateful for it. He clung to her hand with what little strength he had left, terrified by how cold his own skin was beneath hers.
Bill turned sharply, alarm flaring in his eyes.
"What's happening to him?!" he demanded. "The potion would help, but why isn't it working?!"
Hermione was already kneeling beside Harry, wand out, murmuring diagnostic incantations under her breath, her movements swift but careful. Her face had gone pale again, and there was a flicker of panic behind her eyes now, no matter how steady her hands remained.
"Because it's not that simple," she said. "It is not similar to healing a wound. It is deeper than that. Sometimes the potion helps, but most of the time it doesn't. It depends."
Bill's voice cut through her explanation like a whip. "On what?"
Hermione looked up at him.
Her tone was quieter now. And it cracked, just slightly, when she answered.
"On whether his soul can accept the healing."
Bill was staring at her as though she'd begun speaking in Mermish without warning.
"His soul?" he echoed slowly, as if he was trying to process the word itself. "What d'you mean? Is it damaged? How's that even—?"
He broke off, his voice faltering under the weight of something larger than confusion that was closer to fear.
Hermione drew in a sharp breath. She bit her lower lip hard, in that familiar, frantic way that always meant she was bracing herself to say an awful word.
Then, barely more than a whisper, she said, "It was Voldemort."
Harry flinched. He had no other choice. It felt as if the name itself reached inside him and scraped something raw.
Even after all this time, after death, Voldemort's reach lingered like a shadow he couldn't shake.
Hermione's fingers were tugging at the hem of her jumper now. She looked as though she were about to sit for her NEWTs.
"When we first came here," she began carefully, her voice trembling despite itself, "we weren't just running. We were searching. For Horcruxes."
Bill blinked. The word seemed to bounce off him.
"Horcruxes?" he repeated, frowning. "But those are—aren't they really dark magic?"
Harry let his head fall sideways on the cushion, eyes shutting tightly. Nausea twisted through him again, hot and shaming.
Guilt bloomed heavily in his chest. He knew how it must sound. To anyone else, to someone not in the thick of it, it sounded like madness.
It always had.
Hermione nodded slowly, lips pressed into a thin, white line. "He split his soul. Voldemort. He tore it apart deliberately and hid the pieces inside objects. He thought—" she paused, swallowing, "he believed it would make him immortal."
Bill staggered back a step as though her words had struck him full in the heart. For a moment he simply stood there, visibly reeling, as if the floor had shifted beneath his feet and nothing quite made sense anymore.
Harry turned away, unable to look at any of them. Shadows curled at the edge of his vision. His skin felt icy, and his chest ached with something far beyond the physical.
The truth was too much, and the weight they all kept carrying long after the war had ended.
He was so tired of being the reason.
Ginny's hand still wrapped around his, warm and real and steady, held him fast. She did not release him, even when he recoiled or his fingers spasmed.
"It's fine," Ron said suddenly, his voice loud in the quiet room. Too much like someone trying to mend a shattered window with Spellotape.
"We didn't understand it right away, either," he explained, a weak smile playing on his lips, but his eyes remained unaffected. "When Harry told us the first time… it was as if everything we thought we knew just came undone. We, too, found it hard to believe."
Harry's chest pulled tight. The memories pressed in: Grimmauld Place, the Forest of Dean, Dobby's grave, the bitter silence of Shell Cottage. All of it carried the same thread: the truth unravelled slowly, painfully, until it was all they had left.
Ginny shifted beside him. He could feel her watching him. When she spoke, her voice was quiet, but it didn't waver.
"Harry's been speaking with Professor Slughorn," she said, glancing quickly at him, then back to Bill. "That's how he learnt the damage was still… lingering. And that there might be a way to heal it."
The room went silent again.
Harry could sense fear in all of them now. Not the adrenaline-laced panic of battle, but something quieter. Deeper. The terror that came from watching someone you loved slip through your fingers without knowing how to stop it.
Bill let out a slow breath and crossed his arms over his chest, his jaw tight with effort. "And has he… found a way?"
For a long, suspended moment, the only sound was the low whistle of the wind against the windowpanes.
Then Hermione nodded.
"Yes," she said, straightening. Her eyes flashed, not with fear now, but with resolve.
From her beaded bag, she drew out a book.
It was thick and ancient, its cover a tapestry of silver and pale pearl. Runes glimmered across the surface. Even where he lay, Harry could feel the old, deep, and strange magic thrumming from it.
"This has everything," Hermione said. "Soul repair. The process, the potion. The conditions. All of it."
She passed it to Bill as though handing over a sacred object, and he took it slowly, holding it in both hands.
He turned it over, inspecting the binding with a cautious frown.
"Was this from Slughorn?" he asked, voice low.
"No," Hermione replied, her grip tightening on the arm of her chair. "It was in Professor Dumbledore's office. He couldn't get through the enchantments on it after the headmaster died."
Bill frowned deeper. "He protected a book like this. Why? If it's knowledge that could save lives, if it could help someone, why lock it away?"
Harry kept his gaze fixed on the ceiling, blurred at the edges, as though the shadows there might offer some answer. His mind was slipping again, drifting, but something in Bill's question rooted him and dragged him back to the present with a slow, aching pull.
He could still picture the tall shelves of Dumbledore's office, the soft rustle of the wind beyond the tower windows, and the piercing and fathomless way the headmaster's eyes had always looked as though they were staring directly into the centre of him. Not only seeing what he was, but what he might become.
Dumbledore had known.
He must have realised.
Because I was never just Harry to him, was I?
I was the thing Voldemort left behind.
Hermione hesitated.
Then she said softly, "Because it is not simply about healing. It's possible this book is where the first Horcrux came from."
She glanced down at him, and fear, sadness, and maybe guilt flickered in her expression. It was hard to tell. All of it had all lived between them for so long.
"It talks about fragmentation," she said, "about what happens when a soul is… broken. And how it could potentially be made whole again."
Bill looked lost, like someone dropped halfway into a story he hadn't agreed to hear. "But Dumbledore… he must've known. If this were in his office, and if he had access to this, then why didn't he…?"
"Tell us?" Hermione supplied, meeting Bill's eyes. Her voice was low. Tired. "We think he knew. We suspect he did not want this to happen."
Or maybe he couldn't bear to reveal to me what I really was, Harry thought, the bitterness curling in the pit of his stomach. Perhaps he looked at me and saw what was inside and spared me the truth for as long as he could.
A weapon.
A means to an end.
A mistake.
Bill stared at her. His wariness was no longer masked. Every crease of his brow plainly displayed it.
"And you think this is safe?" he asked carefully. "This magic… whatever it is… you reckon it won't make things worse?"
Hermione looked as though she wanted to lie. Only for a second. Just to give him, and the rest of them, something solid to cling to.
But she didn't.
"No," she admitted softly. "We don't know if it's harmless. We understand very little at all. Only that it is the only way forward."
She turned her gaze back to Harry. "And that he doesn't have much time."
Bill stared down at the book, his fingers white-knuckled against the edge of the cover, the patterns shifting beneath his hands. "What would he have done, do you think… if he'd lived longer?"
The question hung there. No one answered it.
Ginny's loud and sudden voice broke the silence. "Where's Fleur?" she asked, forcing a note of brightness into the room.
Harry was grateful. The conversation had felt like drowning.
"She's in France," Bill replied after a pause, brushing a hand through his hair, his tone distant. "Went to see her parents for a few weeks."
"Should we reply to Kingsley?" Ron questioned. He sounded uncertain, and he didn't blame him. The world outside this cottage seemed a thousand miles away.
He exhaled slowly, the weight of everything they had mentioned pressing visibly on his shoulders. "Not yet," he said at last. "Let's get settled first. You all look like the Dragon's tail dragged you through it."
With a flick of his wand, five goblets of butterbeer floated into the room, steaming gently. The spiced and familiar scent rose into the air, and for a fleeting moment, Harry felt the fragile echo of home.
They drank in silence, not because there was nothing to say, but because there was too much. The quiet was a kind of agreement: rest now. Speak later.
Outside, the sun dipped below the horizon, and twilight descended fully on the cliffs. The wind picked up, rattling the windowpanes, and Shell Cottage folded itself into the hush of evening.
When they moved Harry to the guest bedroom, he barely had the strength to lift his head. Ron and Bill supported him between them, guiding his faltering steps. Every part of him ached. It was bone-deep and soul-deep, but worse than the pain was the helplessness. The way he sagged between them, limp and heavy like something half-broken.
He hated it.
But he couldn't fight it.
The room was small and simply furnished, with pale walls and soft blankets that smelt faintly of sea salt and lavender. Just beyond the window, Harry caught the glint of moonlight on stone.
A single grave marker stood in the garden, weathered by wind and time.
Dobby.
Something snagged in Harry's chest, sharp and immediate.
He died free.
The words echoed in his mind, a balm and a wound all at once.
Ginny gently smoothed the covers over him, her fingers brushing lightly across his brow. Hermione crossed the room and shut the window firmly against the cold. Then she drew the curtains closed, as if to hold the world at bay.
Harry's voice cracked through the stillness, rough and barely audible. "Stay close."
He didn't even know who he was speaking to. Maybe all of them, or just Ginny. Probably no one in particular, only the darkness, begging it not to take him.
"We're here," Ron said at once, firm and sure, dropping into the chair beside the bed.
Bill glanced around the room and gave a soft huff. "It'll be a tight squeeze if you're all staying down here."
"We'll manage," Hermione stated with a ghost of a smile, already conjuring extra blankets. "We've camped in worse places."
She didn't say it bitterly. Just tired affection.
"We're not leaving him," Ron added, not looking away from him.
Bill nodded slowly, the tension on his face finally easing. "All right, then. I'll guard the Floo. Keep me updated on any changes."
Harry let his eyes drift closed. Their voices softened into indistinct murmurs; half-conversation and lullaby.
And through it all, Ginny's hand never left his.
Draco moved through Knockturn Alley. The ancient stones beneath his feet were slick with filth, and the reek of soot and sour mildew clung to the air. Foul water dripped somewhere behind him, echoing in the gloom. Each step rang out sharper than the last.
The shadows seemed to shift as he passed, stretching long, tendril-like projections along the walls. They hissed in voices he couldn't decipher, but they were mocking, murmuring, always watching. Some might have called it madness. Draco simply thought of it as penance.
He didn't flinch when a hag hunched in a doorway reached out with clawed fingers, muttering about blood and bones. He slipped past her, untouched. There was nothing left of his for her to take.
The pub emerged from the murk like a rotting tooth in a diseased mouth. Its crooked sign creaked on rusted chains, half-swallowed by mildew and darkness. The door sagged under his touch, groaning open with the squeal of tortured hinges. The sound scraped down his spine, sharp as nails on stone.
Inside, the air was thicker, heavier. The walls pressed close, saturated with smoke, old curses, and worse. It smelt of wet fur and spilt ale, burnt hair and hopelessness. Perfect. It matched the shape of him now.
No heads turned. Down here, in this pit of forgotten loyalties and fraying sanity, curiosity was a death sentence. The clever ones kept their eyes on their drinks. The rest weren't worth noticing.
He found Yaxley where he'd known he would. He curled into the gloom of the farthest corner like a fungus that refused to die. His hair had gone white as chalk, scraped back from a waxy face that was more skull than skin. The red glint in his stare wasn't his own, which looked to be some crude glamour, perhaps, or a dark enchantment that hadn't quite taken. Whatever he had been once, he appeared nothing human now. Just a husk that didn't get the message.
Draco slid into the seat opposite him without so much as a twitch. His heart gave a heavy thud, echoing in his ribs. But he met his gaze with the same cool indifference he had mastered in Malfoy Manor's drawing room.
"Boy," Yaxley rasped, his voice dry as crumbling parchment. "Still breathing, are we?"
Draco tipped his head, fingers steepled beneath his chin. "Bit of a letdown, I know. Do try to contain your heartbreak."
Yaxley's grin peeled back in a gash of yellow teeth. "How's the family? Still licking the Ministry's boots and pretending the collars round their necks are just fashion statements?"
Draco's mouth twitched, though not quite into a smile. "Touching. If you're writing home, I'll let Mother know you asked."
A low laugh slithered from Yaxley's throat, humourless and sharp. "Word is, your lot's breaking bread with blood traitors now. Tea with the Weasleys, is it? Shall I send flowers?"
Draco drummed his fingers lightly on the warped table between them. The effect was a calm and methodical rhythm. "Careful," he murmured. "You're beginning to sound envious."
Yaxley's grin faltered, just for a moment. Then he leaned back, feigning ease, though his stare never left Draco's. Those eyes were feverish. Ravenous. One would give that look to a creature that deserved to have been devoured long ago.
"And you, boy?" he uttered at last, voice slathered in mockery. "Where do you fly your colours these days?"
Something flickered across his face. Cold. Brief. Dangerous. Then it disappeared, shuttered behind a smirk of elegant disdain.
"You think I'm stupid enough to tell you?" he said silkily. "Do you really believe you are significant?"
The words hung in the air. Yaxley's grin curdled.
"Maybe you've gone soft," he sneered. "Tumbled over to Potter's side, have you? Little Draco the Redeemed. There's a headline."
The name hit like a hex. It was fast, sharp, unbidden. Draco's chest tightened before he could stop it. The familiar fury surged, bitter and hot, but he forced it down.
He laughed, thin and resentfully. "Potter? Don't insult me."
"Pity," Yaxley said, leaning forward now, voice dropping into something cruel and conspiratorial. "I've already lost a few friends his way. That oaf of his—Hagrid, is it? Thinks he's safe in the hills."
Draco's stomach turned, nausea twisting through him. But he kept his face still, his eyes narrowing instead into a grin that didn't reach his soul.
"Going for the slow ones first," he murmured. "Very you."
Yaxley's smile vanished. "Watch your tongue, boy."
"And you mind your back," Draco replied, voice lowering to a growl. "You'd be six feet under in a nameless grave if I hadn't vouched for you. Don't forget whose name bought you breathing space."
His knuckles whitened against the filthy table. The air between them trembled, as if the pub itself held its breath.
"Your family's branded," Yaxley spat. "Leashed and caged. You think that buys you leverage?"
Draco leant forward, grey eyes shining with icy fire. "I am aware of what is around my neck," he said quietly. "Better than you know what's round yours."
For a moment, neither of them moved. Then Yaxley's ghost of a hand twitched, and he reached for his wand, but he was already standing, both palms raised in mock surrender, his wand still holstered at his side.
"No need to fuss," he drawled. "No trackers, no Ministry thugs lurking in the alley. Just a drink between old friends. Romantic, isn't it?"
They stood there, tension crackling in the stale air like an uncast spell. At last, Yaxley let his hand fall. His jaw was tight, the lines of his face pulled too taut.
Draco dropped into the seat with the sort of deliberate indolence that reeked of provocation. His limbs sprawled outwards, occupying space as if it belonged to him by birthright, which, in many ways, it did. He laced his fingers behind his head, crossing one leg over the other with a casual elegance that might've looked effortless if not for the sharp glint in his eye.
"You need me," he said, his voice a silken drawl, almost playful. "That's what's truly gnawing at you, isn't it? You can't do this without me, and it's absolutely killing you."
Yaxley said nothing. He didn't so much as flinch because his silence rang with the grudging truth of it. Draco could taste the resentment in the air.
A slow smirk curled at the edge of Draco's mouth. At long last. After everything. After years of crawling in shadows behind stronger men, biting his tongue until it bled, now he was the one with the leverage.
"You're overestimating your value," Yaxley growled finally, his voice sandpaper-rough with contempt. "A bit too sure of yourself, boy. Dangerous trait."
Draco tilted his head lazily, his expression unreadable. Arms folded across his chest, he leaned back with the bored arrogance of someone who'd already won.
"Maybe," he said lightly. "But I've learnt something useful over the years. Playing to survive gets you nowhere. I play to win."
Yaxley's eyes narrowed into slits, the corners of his mouth curling into an expression between a sneer and a snarl. "You sound like Potter," he spat. "All that bloody arrogance. That same pathetic belief that the world owes you a favour."
Draco stiffened. Only slightly. Barely perceptible. But the name hit harder than he'd expected. His lips parted in a flash of anger.
"Don't you dare compare me to that half-blood," he snapped, his voice low and venomous. "He's a coward in his own way. Hides behind sentiment and friends and false nobility."
He could feel the tightness in his throat, the old bitterness stirring, restless. Potter had always been just out of reach, consistently one step ahead. And worse still, people loved him for it. Respected. Remembered.
But not feared.
"Is that what you tell yourself at night?" Yaxley's voice dropped, taunting and slow. "That Potter's nothing more than another weakling waiting to fall? Amusing, really… because somehow, he keeps winning."
Draco's jaw locked. His pulse thudded in his ears. He didn't answer. Yaxley could see it in the tightness of his grip, the flicker in his eye.
The older man chuckled, and it sounded dry and rusted, like he hadn't used it in years. "Potter may be brave," he mused, tracing the grain of the wooden table with a cracked fingernail, "but he surrounds himself with sentimental fools. Blood traitors. Mudbloods. The lot of them. Always trusting and giving people the benefit of the doubt." His voice twisted into a sneer. "Soft. That's their weakness."
Draco said nothing. But he leaned forward, the air between them taut now, humming like a wand mid-duel.
"Tell me how you did it," he said quietly. Something darker coiled beneath his low, dangerous tone, which was no longer mocking.
Yaxley's slow and grotesque grin stretched. It made Draco's stomach lurch, though he kept his face still, but his brow twitched.
"Would you believe," Yaxley began, his speech thick with glee, "it all started with a bit of Ministry gossip?"
His manner turned almost cheerful, in that grisly, unfeeling way some killers take pride in detailing the mess they've made. "Arthur Weasley. Fool was in the Atrium, rattling on to his son about Potter. Loud enough for half the bloody department to hear. Merlin, he might as well have posted it on the Floo Network himself."
Draco leaned back again, watching, listening. Cold now. Detached. Every word added to the picture.
"Sloppy," he murmured.
"Oh, it gets better," Yaxley announced, eyes glittering. "Hearing that got me thinking. There was an entry in Umbridge's old records. Something about the Weasleys. Notes. Family connections. Weak points. Percy in particular…"
He let the name hang there.
Draco's stomach turned again, but he kept his expression blank.
"Polyjuice," Yaxley said with relish. "Just one hair. That's all it took. Ministry security's a joke these days. There are too many sympathisers still clinging to their morals. It was child's play."
"You impersonated Percy," Draco said flatly.
"Wore his face like a mask," he confirmed, tapping his own cheek. "Went strolling into the department as if I had every privilege. I even borrowed his voice. Smiled at his co-workers. Asked the right questions, especially of Arthur Weasley. People are so eager to share when they think they're being clever."
Draco's fists clenched. "And they gave you the location of Potter?"
Yaxley's tone dropped, grave and gloating. "Not just that. There was a folder left open on his desk. A charming brief list. Fireplace coordinates. Known allies. Safe houses."
He leaned forward, face ghostly in the candlelight.
"All I had to do was look interested, and the world opened its doors to me. They didn't see it coming. None of them did."
Draco's stomach twisted with a slow, simmering revulsion, but he kept his aloof expression schooled, the polished mask he'd worn so well for so long.
"And when I saw the owl," Yaxley drawled, voice syrupy with satisfaction, "I knew the game was mine."
Draco arched an eyebrow, the movement slight, calculated. He allowed a sneer to tug at the corner of his mouth, just enough to hide the unease squirming in his chest.
"A bird," he said lazily. "How quaint."
Yaxley's laugh was thick and wet, like something rotting in the depths of a throat. "You mock what you don't understand, boy. Communication is everything. That letter… it spoke of Potter. A cave."
He leant in his chair, arms spreading wide as though unveiling some triumphant masterpiece, the candlelight catching on the ragged hem of his robes and the glint of a threat behind his eyes.
"You do not know how exposed he is at this moment, stripped of his little network and his pedestal of glory and noble lies."
Draco stared at him. Something dark and hot coiled in his chest. It was not anger, not even hatred, but it was older and more bitter. A coldness that crawled along his spine and settled behind his ribs.
"And Potter now?" he asked, each word sharp, measured. "What state is he in?"
"Incapacitated," Yaxley purred, savouring the term like a wine too long cellared. "A touch of poison. A taste of fear. That's all it took. Funny, isn't it? For all his fanfare, it doesn't take much to topple a hero."
He gave a harsh bark of laughter that made Draco's teeth clench. It was an ugly sound, one that reeked of rot, of cowardice dressed as cruelty.
"You enjoy this?" Draco asked, voice low. There was no hiding the disgust in it now.
Yaxley's eyes glittered with malice. "Why wouldn't I? The famous Harry Potter, curled up like a kicked Kneazle. Moaning, twitching, broken. After all these years of that arrogant little wretch parading about, pretending he's better than the rest of us…"
He flung his arms wide, as if demanding applause. "This? This is justice. Poetic, actually."
Draco's lips curved, but it wasn't a smile. It was the bare edge of something dangerous.
Yaxley didn't notice. He reached into his cloak and, with an exaggerated flourish, produced a battered copy of Witch Weekly. Even though the cover was creased and the ink slightly faded, the headline still screamed in lurid pink: THE BOY WHO DISAPPEARED—SPOTTED AT ST MUNGO'S.
He flipped to the centre page and slid it across the table with two crooked fingers. Draco stared.
There, grainy and poorly lit, was a photograph of a half-limp Potter, his head lolling against Hagrid's shoulder. His skin looked pale; his face was slack with fever. The lens of his glasses were cracked, and they were not straight. His hands hung uselessly at his sides.
He said nothing. A muscle in his jaw twitched.
"I haven't read Skeeter's tripe since school," he stated at last. "Did you bribe her yourself, or does she just naturally sniff out decay?"
Yaxley chuckled again, the sound crawling along his skin. "She's a vulture. She doesn't need telling where to feed."
He leaned in, lowering his voice to a whisper, as though confiding a terrible secret.
"And Potter?" he murmured. "He's rotting. From the inside out. As will the other members of the Order. Just like Dumbledore."
Draco's stare was unflinching now. He said nothing. The dense, brittle, and dangerous silence stretched.
The shadows in the room seemed to press closer. His throat felt dry. He blinked slowly.
Is this what he'd wanted once? Power? Status? To see Potter fall?
He swallowed.
"But he's still alive," Draco said at last. Quietly. The words tasted strange in his mouth. Uncomfortable. "He was recuperating. At the hospital."
Yaxley's smile stretched. "Not anymore. He has vanished. Slipped away from St Mungo's. Supporters, enemies, madmen—it makes no difference. He has become a myth now. The boy who fell from grace."
"You failed to keep him," Draco said, and this time the sneer came naturally, sharpened by something bitter. "All that planning, all that grandstanding, and you let him go."
Yaxley's gaze narrowed. But he didn't rise to it.
"We have lost nothing," he said with smug certainty. "We've stirred the water, and the prey will surface again. They always do. When they think it's safe. When they believe they have been victorious."
Draco shifted slightly in his chair. The dread was growing now. Not fast, but slow and certain. Like poison in the blood.
"And I'm part of this… scheme, am I?" he asked, voice low.
Yaxley leaned forward once more, his grin feral. The candlelight caught the edges of his teeth, and he thought suddenly of wolves.
"Oh, you're more than a piece, Draco," he whispered. "You are the keystone."
He stared at him.
"You see it now, don't you?" he continued, words reverent. "This isn't just about vengeance. This is rebirth. Legacy. Blood reclaiming its rightful place."
He gestured with both hands as if conjuring a vision out of the thick, stinking air.
"The Malfoy name—cleansed. Restored. No more shame. No more crawling to traitors and Mudbloods for scraps."
Draco's face didn't change. Not outwardly. But his insides felt like ice cracking underfoot.
He could almost hear his father's voice, smooth and unyielding. You must choose a side, Draco.
He had already done it once. And that path had nearly broken him.
"You think the Malfoy name can be salvaged," he said in a quiet tone, "by dancing on Potter's corpse? Is that it? You believe we can claw our way back to respectability by shackling ourselves to your delusions?"
His voice didn't shake, but it was close. Beneath the surface, his hands were already trembling. He dug his fingernails into his palms to stop them.
Yaxley did not flinch. If anything, he looked encouraged, like a vulture delighted to find its prey still breathing.
"Isn't that what you've always wanted?" he replied gently, mockingly, stepping closer. "To make them all kneel again and see the fear in their eyes when they hear your name? To force them to remember?"
Draco's jaw clenched. His face, usually so controlled, twitched. And for just a heartbeat, an emotion flickered in his grey eyes, something cracked and human. He turned away, mouth tight, as if even looking at him was more than he could stomach.
But he didn't deny it.
And slowly, like someone peeling off scabs with fingers that still bled, he gave a single, deliberate nod.
Yaxley sank back into his chair, entirely too pleased with himself, his lip curled into a smile.
"Well done," he purred, the praise slithering out. "You've proven yourself, Draco. A true pureblood. Unlike your… thoroughly disappointing parents."
The words landed like a backhand across the face.
Draco's head snapped up, anger slicing through the dull weight in his chest.
"Leave them out of this," he stated, voice cold and sharp. "They have nothing to do with your… game."
But Yaxley merely chuckled, low and cruel.
"Ah, there it is. That fire," he said, amused. "I've missed that. Though I must admit, I have always wondered…"
He leant forward, shadow swallowing the glow of the hearth between them.
"Why did you hesitate so often back then?" His voice dropped to a whisper, each word slow and deliberate. "So skittish. So weak. Were you ever truly loyal to the Dark Lord, Draco? Or just playing dress-up in his ranks, hoping no one would notice the fear behind your eyes?"
The accusation slithered heavily, venomously, and inescapably into the air and lingered.
Draco's chest tightened. He could barely draw breath.
In his mind, he heard the echo of his father's bitter words. His mother's quiet, frantic whispers in the dark. The screams he didn't cause but never prevented, either.
He clenched his jaw until it hurt.
"Don't ever question my loyalty," he growled, voice raw with fury and shame. "I carried out his orders and met every expectation. I killed Dumbledore."
The lie felt like a searing, bitter, and unforgivable brand across his tongue.
He had never stopped paying for it. Not in the mirror. Not in his sleep.
Yaxley didn't so much as blink. He reclined, smug as ever, as if he'd been expecting that exact response.
"No, you did not," he said, his tone maddeningly casual. "You hesitated. You faltered. And Snape—Snape—had to clean up your mess."
His lips curled into a sneer.
"All you did was sulk around Hogwarts. Hardly a proud legacy for the last scion of the House of Malfoy."
Draco's hands were fists now, shaking with the effort of keeping them by his sides. His nails had broken skin. He could feel the hot sting of blood in his palms.
"I don't sulk," he hissed.
Yaxley's smile widened. He had him, and they both knew it.
"Then prove it," he snarled. And then he jabbed one of his fingers against Draco's chest, deliberate, taunting, like a final push off a ledge.
"Show you're not the coward we all know you are."
The fire flared, casting gold and shadow across the walls. For a moment, the world narrowed to that single point of pressure, that insolent touch. Draco could feel his fury thrumming just beneath his skin, molten and barely contained.
He wanted to strike. To hex Yaxley where he stood. To scream, I've survived more than you ever could.
Instead, he breathed slowly and shallowly, and stayed still.
He swallowed the anger, bitter as poison.
"What's your plan?" he said, voice rough, like it scraped against something sharp on its way out. "What grand little scheme are you cooking up this time? Unless you've suddenly got a means to find him, I don't see what good your sneering does."
Yaxley didn't blink. His expression was almost serene now, tranquil in that twisted, self-satisfied manner that made him want to break something.
"Our primary aim," he said, as if delivering a lecture, "is not to kill Harry Potter."
Draco frowned. His stomach gave a small, uneasy twist.
"What?" he asked before he could stop himself. "That's been your only objective. You poisoned him—you had the chance—"
Yaxley waved a hand, irritation flitting across his features. "Oh, please. A quick death is so… anticlimactic."
He leaned back again, fingers steepled in front of him.
"No. We don't want to kill him. Not yet."
His face slowly broke into a smile.
"We are trying to break him."
Draco stared.
A part of him, which had to be the last shred of his sanity, wanted to laugh. Because hadn't they already done that? How much more destruction could they inflict on Potter?
"And how," he asked deliberately, "do you mean to pull that off… when you don't have the slightest clue where he is?"
Yaxley didn't even offer a slight smile.
Before he could speak, the door to the pub creaked open on ancient, rusted hinges, the sound slicing through the low hum of voices. Two cloaked figures slipped inside, silent as mist, their movements swift and unnervingly deliberate.
Draco's gaze snapped to them at once, instinct tightening his muscles before his mind caught up. There was something in the way they moved: no hesitation, no uncertainty, just sharp, calculated steps that sent an icy trickle down his spine. Not the swaggering bravado of the older lot, not the snarling mask of blind loyalty. These were precise. Practised. The kind who didn't speak unless they had a reason to converse. The sort that left no trace.
Their movements were predatory.
Wordlessly, they approached Yaxley's corner, their cloaks brushing the floorboards. The first person leaned down, near his ear, muttering low and fast. Draco caught snatches of words—Weasley home… no sign… Aurors in the area…
The second man spoke with a voice that sounded like gravel. "Close call. Nearly got pinned down. They moved quickly. Must've had help."
He felt something coil in his chest. It was a slow, icy dread tightening. The Burrow. They had gone to the house. Went after the Weasleys.
No longer solely on Potter anymore and the so-called Chosen One they'd obsessed over for years. They were hunting everyone who had ever stood beside him. Family. Friends. The people who hadn't run, who had dared to care out loud.
The walls were closing in now, not just on Harry but on every single person who had been bold enough to love him.
Yaxley's expression changed. The smug ease that usually curled at the edges of his mouth vanished, and in its place rose something meaner, colder, stripped of pretence.
"And St Mungo's?" He barked, fingers drumming once against the table.
The first man straightened, pulling his hood back slightly, revealing a narrow jaw and stubbled chin. "Blood traitors are dug in. Percy Weasley's inside. That half-giant's with him. No sign of Potter. One healer mentioned she spotted two of Potter's friends bolting down a corridor… said she thought she heard screaming. Then they vanished. Portkey, most likely."
Yaxley's eyes glittered, catching the dim light. A smile crept across his face, slow and awful, as though he were savouring something no other person could smell.
"Is that so?" he murmured, almost to himself.
Then, with a casual flick of his hand, he dismissed them. They nodded, turned, and melted back into the haze.
Draco watched them go, throat tight, hands clenched in his lap. He recognised neither of them. New recruits, probably. The kind who never made it to a second mission. Useful only until they weren't.
Expendable.
His jaw locked.
"How many Death Eaters do you actually have left?" He asked suddenly, the words slipping out more bitter than he'd meant.
Yaxley didn't seem offended. If anything, he looked amused. He gave an exaggerated sigh and leaned back.
"Fewer than twenty," he said breezily. "And even that's generous. Half of them are barely worth the ink on their forearms. Desperate. Paranoid. Like rats in a trap, gnawing at the woodwork, hoping they'll find a way out."
His tone turned just slightly, his lip curling. "Once, we dreamt of control. Of cleansing. Of a new order." He sneered. "Now we scrabble through the ashes, picking at scraps left by cowards and traitors."
Draco said nothing.
He had grown up believing in names. In pedigree. In power earned by blood. He'd been taught that the world bent for the worthy, that magic respected those who ruled it.
And yet, here he was and here they all were, sitting in the ruins of a cause that had devoured itself, teeth first.
A thought slid, quiet and sharp, through the back of his mind:
What if we'd done it differently?
What if he and Potter had stood on the same side?
What if he hadn't been born into chains gilded to look like a legacy?
He crushed the notion before it could settle. No use thinking that way.
Yaxley studied him for a moment, gaze piercing and unreadable, and then smiled. Not kindly. It was the kind that made your stomach twist a little too tightly.
He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table.
"We're paying a visit," he said, voice low, almost pleased. "To one of the blood traitors."
The words landed. Final. Measured.
Draco's spine went rigid.
He didn't want to ask.
But the silence stretched, heavy and expectant, until he heard his own quiet and distant word asking anyway.
"Who?"
Yaxley's grin widened, teeth glinting in the firelight.
"George Weasley."